Buying the F-35 Could Be Canada’s Biggest Strategic Mistake

In the next few weeks, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will make one of the most important decisions of its short life, with enormous consequences for Canada’s relations with the United States and our national defence. That decision is whether to stick with the proposed purchase of eighty-eight F-35 fighter jets.

To grasp what’s at stake, it helps to see how Canada’s military has long conceived of its role. For eighty years, it has understood itself in a particular way. On the surface, it talks about weapons and capabilities. But underneath that jargon lies a guiding doctrine: that Canada’s armed forces belong as close as possible to the side of the US military.

The armed forces even have a word for it: interoperability. In practice, interoperability means building a military designed to work in lockstep with its US counterpart at the highest levels of combat. This is a level of integration far beyond what most North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies seek through such things as standardized stocks of ammunition. The Royal Canadian Navy is one of a very few navies that can seamlessly embed a ship into a US carrier battle group—and has regularly done so. Our army commanders are trained to operate jointly with US counterparts. And the Royal Canadian Air Force functions as part of a broader binational framework of air defence, which is led by the US.

Interoperability with America’s war-fighting ranks is the cornerstone of our approach to defence. You might call it the Canadian military’s world view.

This world view arose during the Cold War, when the idea that Canada would ever act militarily apart from the US was inconceivable. But is this still the case? As US president Donald Trump casts doubt on America’s commitment to NATO’s core principle—Article 5, the pledge that an attack on one is an attack on all—should Canada assume it will always fight alongside the US?

That question is at the heart of Canadian defence planning today—and our acquisition of the F-35. Do we develop capacities that reduce reliance on the US by acquiring the ability to work with others and be more self-reliant? Or do we bet on Trump as a temporary blip, trusting that sanity will be restored, and thus resist throwing away the benefits of decades of close interoperability?

The fight over the fighter jet is where the debate cuts deepest right now. If we opt to purchase the F-35, and no other type of high-tech warplane, we will make a critical aspect of our defence utterly dependent on continued co-operation with the US. Canada’s F-35s will be reliant on the US to be able to function, much more than any previous jet we have purchased has ever been, even ones made in the US, such as the F-18.

The RCAF has been pushing the government to follow through on its contract with the US defence giant Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35. For the RCAF, it’s a contest between the plane’s strengths and the potential of its rivals. But the decision turns on more than competing hardware. My discussions with retired RCAF generals tend to end on the same plaintive note: if we don’t buy the F-35, we won’t have an air force anymore. This is, of course, absurd. Many countries don’t have F-35s and have perfectly good (and quite lethal) air forces. The countries include France and Sweden, two allies who have eschewed the F-35 in favour of their own aircraft.

What my friends are saying, however, is that if Canada turns away from the F-35, we won’t have an RCAF as they understand it and have trained their whole lives for, one which is seamlessly interoperable with the US Air Force. These are thoroughly good and decent men who have risked their lives to defend Canada. But they simply cannot comprehend an RCAF that does not fit their world view.

The real question is whether this approach still makes sense given the path the US is on. It’s no longer enough to accept interoperability as dogma. We have to ask something harder. What is it actually for? Why do we insist on it? And, ultimately, does it make Canada safer?

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The F-35 is a technical wonder. It can acquire, process, and fuse together an astonishing volume and array of different types of information to create an unparalleled picture of the battlefield. It can securely link itself to other F-35s spread over vast distances, and also to forces at sea, on the ground, and in space. This allows it to create and prosecute a unique, multi-dimensional, real-time understanding of an unfolding battle. On top of that, it is stealthy; the enemy cannot see it coming.

This combination of stealth, sensors, and computing power makes the F-35 a fifth-generation fighter—as opposed to our venerable F-18s, which are fourth generation. Actually, some fourth-generation aircraft are now called 4.5 generation because they have acquired more advanced features than their predecessors, though they do not have stealth or approach the F-35’s unparalleled capabilities. Canada’s remaining F-18s achieved 4.5 status in the last set of overhauls, but they are rapidly nearing the end of their lives. To use an analogy, they are very old cars tricked out with new features—but are still very old cars.

The F-35’s performance hinges on frequent updates to its operating system. All of this comes from the Joint Program Office. The JPO is the Pentagon’s nerve centre for the F-35, steering the aircraft’s design, costs, and upkeep. Critically, the JPO controls the “source codes” of the F-35—the basic software which allows the jet to receive the latest improvements to keep going and evolve. These source codes are not shared with the purchaser of the aircraft (though Israel, owing to its unique ties with the US, can make changes other F-35 partners can’t).

This obviously creates a critical dependency. If the upgrades are cut off, the F-35 soon becomes unusable. And without the source codes, the operator of the aircraft cannot make upgrades themselves. This is new. Previously, one bought a fighter and acquired the ability to more or less independently operate and maintain it. Of course, remaining on good terms with the vendor made a lot of sense in order to share the load of maintaining the aircraft. But in the final analysis, the vendor could not simply shut down the plane. Iran, for example, bought US fighters under the shah. After the revolution, the US cut off support, but the Iranians kept them going—not at the peak of capability they would have enjoyed if they still had relations with the US, but the airplanes were on the front lines for many years.

This is not possible with the F-35. Fall out of favour with the JPO (or the US government) and your jets could soon be less capable or even inoperable. When the F-35 was first devised and developed, we lived in a world where the RCAF’s world view held firm; it was unthinkable that the US would cut off an ally. It is still unlikely—but is it unthinkable? Until a few months ago, it was unthinkable that a US president would threaten the territory of an ally.

Moreover, not all F-35s bought by international partners will be equal. Trump, never one to miss an opportunity to gloat, has publicly mused that fighters sold to allies will be less capable than the version retained by the US—because they might not be allies one day. In other words, one will never know if one’s F-35 is a top-of-the-line model or one that is dumbed down. Without access to the source codes, you simply have to trust that the upgrades from the JPO will keep your version at the head of the pack.

When pressed privately, senior RCAF officers admit that the JPO will rank partners, but they insist Canada’s F-35s will be near the top. We are, after all, part of the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement. Some of our F-35s will be dedicated to the defence of North America, which means that the Americans will have an interest in our jets being as capable as possible. Beyond that, the RCAF is leaning on its belief that our special relationship with the US Air Force will carry the day no matter what—that we will continue to be “inside the tent” in a way few other allies can claim.

But we were once, supposedly, inside a very special tent in terms of trade, with the North American Free Trade Agreement and then the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement. How is that going these days? If, as Carney says, the era of an ever-deepening relationship with the US is “over,” how do we know that our F-35s will not slip into second-class status? And if we decide one day to join a coalition of nations taking action on a matter that the US opposes, how do we know that the JPO won’t cut off our F-35s?

Imagine, for example, that Russian president Vladimir Putin breaks a peace agreement he may sign with Ukraine (not a big leap of imagination). Trump, or his successor, President J. D. Vance, decides not to honour the security guarantees. Kyiv is determined to fight, and a consortium of nations decides to help. Canada dispatches F-35s to join the effort. The American president opposes this, fearing that F-35s (even non-American ones) fighting Russian troops undercuts his broader objectives for the US–Russia relationship. Will the JPO be ordered to cut off or dumb down our fighters?

All of this assumes the F-35 will always reliably work as advertised (a claim undermined by the persistent glitches that befall the jet) and that the aircraft’s prized tech will hold up over its lifespan. The F-35 is supposed to be a front-line fighter for thirty or more years. What if the secrets of its stealth are unravelled by an adversary in that time? Will the F-35 still be so lethal if the enemy can see it coming? Throughout history, military advantages have come and gone, from the crossbow to the Dreadnought battleship to MIRVed missiles, which can unleash several warheads. Supposedly game-changing weapons have eventually been cracked, copied, or countered by adversaries.

The alternative is to buy a new 4.5-generation fighter, such as the Swedish Gripen, which is manufactured by Saab. It would not be as capable as the F-35 across the same range of missions. It might not be as interoperable with the US Air Force for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, mission, though ways could be found around that through tailored solutions. And it might mean cutting ourselves off from the evolving networked war-fighting framework the US is developing. It would be a significant break from the RCAF’s world view. Depending on how it is done, such a break could call into question our ability to participate in Trump’s “Golden Dome” ballistic missile defence project, should we decide to do so.

We would, however, control our air force. If we accepted Saab’s offer to build the Gripen in Canada under licence, we would understand the aircraft in a way we will never understand the F-35. We will have the ability to negotiate access to the source codes (as Brazil did when it bought the Gripen) and to develop the capacity to perform all of the software programming ourselves.

There are also ways in which we could make up for the deficiencies of not having F-35s. If we invested in a fleet of highly capable airborne warning systems, such as the Saab “GlobalEye” aircraft (based on a Bombardier business jet), they could do some of the work in terms of sensing and fusing data, which they would then transmit to our 4.5-generation fighters. Needing extra communication links, it would be a more cumbersome approach, but it would be something that we would control.

Would such an air force be as capable as one equipped with F-35s? Perhaps not in a battle against what the military calls a “peer adversary”—a nation equipped to the same standard as the USAF. But how many of these are there? Perhaps, if there is a future conflict over Taiwan with a thoroughly modernized Chinese Air Force, our contribution could be limited. But if one looks at the significant things that Canada’s air force has actually done in past decades, from air campaigns in the Persian Gulf to Yugoslavia/Kosovo and Libya, they did not involve peer-to-peer combat.

Lastly, if part of the defence of North America could arguably be handled by a 4.5-generation fighter in sufficient numbers, linked to an airborne warning capability, we would still be inside the tent when decisions are made regarding the aerospace defence of our North.

But, of course, the key fact today is that it is no longer an either/or question in terms of the F-35. We are contractually committed to sixteen of them. So we are going to have at least some F-35s no matter what. The question really is whether we will have, as the RCAF wants, a force made up entirely of F-35s. If we cap our purchase at sixteen, thirty-two, or some other number, we would then be in the realm of operating both F-35s and 4.5-generation fighters. This is called having a mixed fleet.

To the RCAF, a mixed fleet is a nightmare. It requires separate logistics and training structures to maintain each aircraft. We ran mixed fleets during the Cold War, but our air force was a lot bigger, and we spent a lot more (as a percentage of gross domestic product) on it. While there may be a social consensus on more defence spending today, will it last? Canadians are notorious for being willing to spend on defence when we have to—but then quietly letting it drop when we can get away with it. The RCAF is not wrong to worry that a mixed fleet means they will eventually end up holding the bag for two different fighters, with not enough money to operate or upgrade either properly.

But a mixed fleet, properly funded, would mean that we will always fully control at least a part of our air force. It would enable us to develop really close defence relations with countries beyond the US as a hedge against a day when we will no longer be able to depend on the JPO. And we would know that if we ever really wanted to do something that the US disagreed with, we could at least make a contribution. It is interesting to note that many other countries which have bought the F-35, including such close friends as the UK, Australia, Japan, and Germany, are maintaining mixed fleets.

That brings us back to the real question: What is Canada’s world view? Not the Canadian Armed Forces’ or the RCAF’s—but Canada’s? That should be the foundation of this decision. The RCAF sees itself as a junior partner to the USAF and sees the F-35 as the sole fighter aircraft to meet what it believes is Canada’s enduring interoperability imperative.

The Carney government, however, must decide whether staking the country’s future on a single jet matches our national vision. That means also facing the fallout for Canada–US relations if we walk away from sole reliance on the F-35. Washington will protest, but given that even its own generals admit they can’t defend North America without us, they will ultimately find a way to adapt to a mixed fleet. It will be important, however, if this is the way the decision goes, to make sure that it is not presented as an anti-American one.

In the end, this isn’t about military hardware. It’s about core beliefs of who we are and where we see ourselves in a rapidly changing world. If the RCAF can’t imagine a future beyond the F-35, then maybe the RCAF’s world view—not Canada’s—needs to change.